Matthew Stewart
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Two poems by Matthew Stewart
Hand in Hand When we approached the pelican crossing,your hand unexpectedly grabbed at minefor the first time in over forty years,your palm shocking me with its snug smoothness as if it had never been away.How long remains till I reachagain for David’s hand?Will it be there? Only Child A dozen family funerals in,I’m starting to…
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‘One of the best Scottish poets of his generation’? – On Gerald Mangan
Matthew Stewart How many individuals really do manage to produce outstanding work in more than one medium of the arts? Very, very few is the inevitable answer – but Gerald Mangan might well be one of them. Mangan, born in Glasgow in 1951, is known not only as a playwright and actor, but is also…
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‘Fútbol Sala’: a poem by Matthew Stewart
Fútbol Sala ¡A un solo toque! ¡Más rápido!¡Acho, Maciu! ¡Más rápido, coño! They’re taking it in turns to yell at meevery time a neat pass avoids my bootand cannons off my ankle into touch.They zip the ball across the parquet floor,drawing triangle after triangle. Sunday league at the Rec in Dockenfielddidn’t exactly ready me for…
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‘Aveley Lane’: a poem by Matthew Stewart
The poem below was originally published in The Spectator and appears in Matthew Stewart’s second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, forthcoming from HappenStance Press in November. A launch for the collection will take place at The Devereux pub, Temple, London, from 7pm on Tuesday 7th November; free entry. Aveley Lane Lights turned on but…
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The confessional as poetry’s play within a play: on Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
Matthew Stewart Deeply personal collections, packed with poems that narrate break-ups and emotional turmoil, tend to encourage the reader to narrow the distance between the poet and the lyrical ‘I’ to nothing, especially in light of the recent trend for viewing poetry as self-expression and self-discovery. And at first glance, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s first collection, Sing…
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On ‘Fear of Forks’ by Hilary Menos
Matthew Stewart One of the main reasons for exerting restraint in poetry is to play with what is held back, left unsaid. The portrayal of linguistic and existential order implicitly hints at the disorder lurking just beneath the surface of our sentences and our lives. Read in this context, the unshowy method…
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On ‘Glut’ by Ramona Herdman
Matthew Stewart It might initially seem snide or negative to suggest that a poet’s work is best represented by their idiosyncratic use of one specific punctuation mark, as if the reviewer were hinting at a tic, the reoccurrence of which has failed to be spotted and excised during the editorial process. However,…
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On ‘The Sleep Road’ by Stewart Sanderson
Matthew Stewart In his first full collection, The Sleep Road (Tapsalterie, 2022), Stewart Sanderson addresses several issues that are currently popular among many poets of his generation: the relationship between the human and natural worlds, the role that history plays in understanding the present, and an examination of national identity. Nevertheless,…
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Pushing her own boundaries: on Alison Brackenbury’s ‘Thorpeness’
Matthew Stewart Alison Brackenbury’s new collection, Thorpeness (Carcanet Press, 2022), provides a perfect rebuttal to Larkin’s notorious disavowal of a poet’s obligation to develop. This might be Brackenbury’s eleventh full collection, but it does show an indisputable progression. All Brackenbury’s renowned qualities remain present in Thorpeness, such as her mastery…
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‘Marginalised and Pigeonholed’: a re-evaluation of Evangeline Paterson
Matthew Stewart urges the re-evaluation of Evangeline Paterson as a major poet of her generation Blurbs tend to get a justified bashing these days for their breathless praise and jargonised code, and there’s no doubt the current trend is towards their use purely as a marketing tool. However, in the past they…
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Three poems from ‘Starting Eleven’ by Matthew Stewart
Left: Aldershot striker Mike Ring (16 goals in 76 appearances) with a diving header Right: Midfielder Ian McDonald, flanked by Bill Shankly, signing for Liverpool before his Shots days (340 apps) Aldershot FC Footballers of the 1980s 3 – Ian Phillips Shaven-headed but for straw-blond sideburns, signed on a free…
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Larkin Stateside: implicit dialogues between the poetries of Joshua Mehigan and Philip Larkin
Matthew Stewart From the perspective of English critics, poets and readers, it’s impossible to separate Philip Larkin’s qualities as a poet from his country of origin. He’s such a quintessentially English figure that any assessment or evaluation of his work inevitably gets weighed down by social and political baggage. Of course, foreigners come…
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On the poetry of George Kendrick
Matthew Stewart Let’s take a forgotten poet who went from publishing with Carcanet, garnering a PBS Recommendation and receiving excellent reviews in the broadsheets in the process, to barely appearing in Google searches for his name. Let’s chuck in an almost cinematographic biography with enough intriguing details and mysterious gaps to set…
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On ‘Dressing for the Afterlife’ by Maria Taylor
Matthew Stewart In her second full collection, Dressing for the Afterlife (Nine Arches, 2020), Maria Taylor makes a huge step forward from her already impressive first book, Melanchrini (Nine Arches, 2012). This progress is signposted by coherence and cohesion. Whether dealing with gender, nationality or family, the solidity of Taylor’s method provides…
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‘A parent’s age’: on the poetry of Rory Waterman
Matthew Stewart ‘Belonging’ and ‘estrangement’ are key terms when getting to grips with Rory Waterman’s poetry. They played an explicitly pivotal role in his early years, but his work has implicitly carried on worrying away at their connotations, interpretations and ramifications ever since. On the one hand, Waterman’s poems have been gaining…
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Three poems by Matthew Stewart
Happy Birthday …You clear them away, usher in a future not featuring you. Michael Laskey, ‘Birthday Cards’ While hunting the posh cutlery for my cousin’s annual visit, I found them stowed in your sideboard, opened one to declarations of love next to a wobbly heart drawn by my primary-school hand.…
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Two poems by Matthew Stewart
Shortheath Road In a suburb of my former home town on the way to a relegation clash, I stop to get a pasty for half-time at our corner shop, waiting in a queue alongside freshly elderly people. They’re the latest versions of Mum and Dad: Damart trousers, Dannimacs and stout shoes.…